THE presidential election has changed forever the way politicians will look at hunters, anglers and shooters.

As we said before Tuesday’s election, politicians looked at the 40 million sportsmen and women as a powerful voting block and realized, unlike Gov. Mario Cuomo, that hunters and shooters vote. The infamous quote from Gov. Cuomo was that “hunters don’t vote, drink beer and lie to their wives about where they are on weekends.”

America’s hunting and shooting community will have a friend in the White House for four more years, plus new friends in the Senate and the House, after Tuesday’s win by George W. Bush.

“With pro-gun leadership in the House and Senate, as well as the White House, we’re very optimistic about our prospects for protecting 2nd Amendment freedoms and hunting traditions, and advancing legislation to protect firearms makers and sellers from frivolous lawsuits that threaten their businesses,” said Doug Painter, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

In closely-contested Ohio, early indications are that the sportsman’s vote helped tip the balance in Bush’s favor, securing for the president that state’s important 20 electoral votes. One news report said 60 percent of hunters and shooters voted for Bush over Kerry in Ohio, thus validating the NSSF campaign and the grassroots efforts of the NRA and other groups in that state and nationwide.

“In the end, sportsmen did not buy into John Kerry’s johnny-come-lately hunter disguise,” said Painter. “Sportsmen clearly saw through the camouflage of Kerry’s much publicized goose hunt in Ohio and other photo-ops and instead focused on his 20-year record of consistent anti-gun votes in the Senate.”

Senate elections also saw a strong net pickup of four pro-gun seats, which bodes well for prohibiting politically motivated lawsuits aimed at firearms manufacturers. Among the pro-gun upgrades in the Senate was the election of Republican John Thune of South Dakota, who defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a supporter of the amendments that prevented passage of the lawsuit immunity bill that would have blocked junk lawsuits against the firearms industry.

The NRA also continued to show its clout. Of the 18 candidates for the U.S. Senate endorsed by the National Rifle Association, 14 won while 241 of the 251 NRA-endorsed House of Representatives candidates won. Those are amazing numbers when you consider that many in this country felt the NRA was losing some of it lobbying power on Capitol Hill.